Well, not to defend the nazis or anything, but they did manage to make considerable amounts of damage and it took multiple great powers working together to beat them back.
That’s how Fascists work though. They pick fights with bigger and bigger opponents – because they’re invulnerable, you see – until they lose. Their economy was absolutely insane, and required flat out pillaging their neighbours. Eventually your neighbours are too big to pillage.
Historians debate just how fascist Franco was. Hell, Orwell wasn’t even quite sure, and he was very open about the fact that he went to Spain to kill a fascist.
Edit: a choice passage out of Homage to Catalonia, emphasis added:
But there were several points that escaped general notice. To begin with, Franco was not strictly comparable with Hitler or Mussolini. His rising was a military mutiny backed up by the aristocracy and the Church, and in the main, especially at the beginning, it was an attempt not so much to impose Fascism as to restore feudalism. This meant that Franco had against him not only the working class but also various sections of the liberal bourgeoisie—the very people who are the supporters of Fascism when it appears in a more modern form. More important than this was the fact that the Spanish working class did not, as we might conceivably do in England, resist Franco in the name of ‘democracy’ and the status quo; their resistance was accompanied by—one might almost say it consisted of—a definite revolutionary outbreak. Land was seized by the peasants; many factories and most of the transport were seized by the trade unions; churches were wrecked and the priests driven out or killed. The Daily Mail, amid the cheers of the Catholic clergy, was able to represent Franco as a patriot delivering his country from hordes of fiendish ‘Reds’.
And as a side note, the Daily Mail has been terrible for a long, long time.
Also, they successfully occupied most of the countries in western and central Europe. It’s only when they tried to expand into Russia that the war started. If they didn’t pick a fight with the russians, the Third Reich would have lasted much longer.
They won many wars in a row without losing. Then they just overdid it a lil bit at the end and got bonked. They couldve had a huge empire if they just stopped a bit earlier.
I think a major part of getting “beat” is they fought the USSR in the east and simultaneously the USA and UK in the west. I mean the war against Stalin wasn’t going super smoothy. But it went on since 1941 already. And it really went south for the nazis when the USA joined WW2.
Well, not to defend the nazis or anything, but they did manage to make considerable amounts of damage and it took multiple great powers working together to beat them back.
Yes, they were beaten by a group of different people who let anyone join.
Nazis were literally defeated by diversity and inclusivity.
That’s how Fascists work though. They pick fights with bigger and bigger opponents – because they’re invulnerable, you see – until they lose. Their economy was absolutely insane, and required flat out pillaging their neighbours. Eventually your neighbours are too big to pillage.
Isn’t that not just an imperialistic trait, not necessarily a fascistic one? Franco’s Spain didn’t collapse, while it was still very much fascistic.
All the while, this trait is very much applicable to the Roman, Ottoman, Soviet or US empires.
Historians debate just how fascist Franco was. Hell, Orwell wasn’t even quite sure, and he was very open about the fact that he went to Spain to kill a fascist.
Edit: a choice passage out of Homage to Catalonia, emphasis added:
And as a side note, the Daily Mail has been terrible for a long, long time.
Also, they successfully occupied most of the countries in western and central Europe. It’s only when they tried to expand into Russia that the war started. If they didn’t pick a fight with the russians, the Third Reich would have lasted much longer.
They won many wars in a row without losing. Then they just overdid it a lil bit at the end and got bonked. They couldve had a huge empire if they just stopped a bit earlier.
I won’t say Finland or Thailand were great powers but Japan had a decent showing so it’s not like they were alone
Though it really only took USSR to beat Germany
The USSR was only in the fight thanks to lend lease and even Stalin admitted as much.
I think a major part of getting “beat” is they fought the USSR in the east and simultaneously the USA and UK in the west. I mean the war against Stalin wasn’t going super smoothy. But it went on since 1941 already. And it really went south for the nazis when the USA joined WW2.